We are just a few days away from the start of the NBA season, and yet, thanks to that blasted lockout, we are just wrapping up the free-agency period. It was about three months shorter than usual, but there has been plenty of time for some clear winners to emerge—oh, and some losers, too.

WINNERS

David Stern, Hornets honcho. As the chief executive of the Hornets, credit Stern with turning down a pretty good offer for Chris Paul that came via the proposed three-way trade with the Rockets and Lakers—one that would have netted New Orleans a core of Lamar Odom, Luis Scola and Kevin Martin—and instead holding out for a deal from the Clippers that brought a budding star (Eric Gordon), a young prospect with high upside (Al-Farouq Aminu), a cap-space-saver (Chris Kaman) and a likely top ten draft pick.

Vinny Del Negro. Before the Paul trade, Del Negro’s future in L.A. was cloudy. He is in the last year of his contract, and once Blake Griffin established himself as a star, the Clippers job became desirable for top-tier coaches. Del Negro will be on the firing line should this team disappoint, but with Paul, Chauncey Billups and Caron Butler now in the mix, he has a team that could win the division and advance deep into the playoffs. It would be hard not to give him an extension if the Clippers can accomplish that.

Big Three South. They still don’t have a reliable point guard or a center, but the Heat did add versatile wing Shane Battier, who will take a lot of pressure off LeBron James and Dwyane Wade on the defensive end. Battier is a career 38.5 percent 3-point shooter and should get an abundance of wide-open looks with this team. Miami clearly is the favorite to win the title this year.

Danny Granger. Granger didn’t come out and complain about the Pacers’ wave of youth last year, but he did let it be known that, with the team sitting on a mountain of cap space, he was expecting some veteran help this season. Well, he has gotten it, as the Pacers traded for Spurs guard George Hill on draft day and added Hornets power forward David West in free agency. They also added two potentially valuable role players—forward Jeff Pendergraph and dirty-work veteran Louis Amundson.

Tyson Chandler. Knicks fans are duly pumped about the team’s maneuverings that yielded Chandler as the team’s new man in the middle. He does have the potential to give the Knicks a defensive presence they’ve lacked, but the fact that he was so hotly pursued by the Knicks and Warriors has more to do with the impression that Chandler singlehandedly transformed the Mavericks’ defense into a championship-caliber unit. Dallas had other quality defenders, though (DeShawn Stevenson, Shawn Marion) but the injury-prone Chandler still cashed in on his Finals rep with a four-year, $60 million contract, pretty astonishing for a guy with career averages of 8.3 points and 8.8 rebounds.

David Stern, commissioner. Stern may have done the right thing as head of the Hornets, but he fumbled in his role of commissioner as the nullification of the Paul trade turned into a fiasco. He should have been far more involved from the onset of talks on the three-way deal with the Lakers and Rockets, because both of those franchises were under the impression that they had a deal before Stern nixed it. There really is no good way for Stern to serve as both commissioner and final decision-maker of the Hornets, but he handled it about as poorly as possible.

Dwight Howard. Paul was sent to the Clippers without having to meet the media beforehand, and with Stern receiving the bulk of the criticism in the wake of the collapsed Laker deal, Paul was spared vilification as he moved out of New Orleans. Not so for Howard, who has done more hard than good by the talking he’s done, sometimes indicating he’d like to stay in Orlando, sometimes indicating he wants out. What’s worse, after a sleep-walking performance in the Magic’s opening preseason game, Howard was the subject of intense scrutiny and will probably face the same level of inspection in every game he plays for the Magic this year.

Kobe Bryant. Bryant had an NBA-goes-country kind of offseason: His sixth man got traded, his knees (and now his wrist) are hurtin’, he’s getting a divorce, his coach done left him and his dog died. Well, his dog is probably fine, but coming into his 16th season, Bryant’s Lakers have oodles of question marks, including how ready new coach Mike Brown is for the Lakers job, how the team will handle Lamar Odom’s absence, how motivated Pau Gasol will be after his near-trade to Houston and how productive a relatively untested supporting cast will be.

Big Three North. With Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen heading into free agency, this could be the final year of the Big Three in Boston, and team president Danny Ainge nearly put together a roster that could boost them back into Eastern Conference contention. But when the Paul deal was nixed, a potential sign-and-trade that would have sent David West from New Orleans to Boston fell apart, too. Things got worse when Jeff Green, expected to take on a bigger role after signing a one-year, $9 million deal, was ruled out for the season with a heart condition.

Warriors. Golden State entered the offseason with a clear goal—get a dominating presence in the middle and follow him all the way to the playoffs. But the Warriors were left reeling when Chandler ditched them for the Knicks, and had their offer sheet for DeAndre Jordan matched by the Clippers, before finally settling on (ahem) a one-year deal for Kwame Brown.